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History of Cascadia (SDNW2)
History Pre-Republic History The first humans to move into the area of Cascadia were hunter-gatherer natives of Asiatic background, filtering into modern Jieshi and Columbia by 5,000 B.C. along the tracks of the upper Jieshi River. The local populace remained fairly static over the years, living on fishing from the river valleys and plentiful hunting in the forested Cascades. Following South and North branches of the Jieshi, the nomadic natives soon began to settle along the banks of the larger Cascade and Columbia rivers from which they eventually spread into the rest of Columbia and into Oregon and Grant. The Natives were paganistic in religion, worshipping various spirits fixed to aspects of Nature, with a tribalistic society in which the Jieshu and Tacoma tribes were the most numerous. There is ample evidence of occasional inter-tribal warfare over hunting grounds, conflicts fought mostly with weapons of stone and wood as metal-working was beyond their skill and would not be developed independently. Only in the extreme south of modern Cascadia was there pre-Caucasian settlement. The Asiatic populations of the Rosario and southern Oregon regions came from further south in the continent and tended to monarchial or oligarchial government. Cuithepil, near modern San Magdalena, became the most prosperous of these Rosarian statelets, which traded heavily with tribes further up the course of the Nevada River. The first Caucasian settlers moved into the Puget Sound area in the first milennium AD, coming from the early republics of the east of the American continent due to the discovery of the natural canal between Wilkonia and Tonkin. The two populations remained aloof from each other save for trade given the Caucasians' preference for settling and town-building. However, their development of agriculture appealed to some of the larger tribes and prompted them to accept the idea of settling, leading to the establishment of the Jieshi state on the upper reaches of the Jieshi river where the Jieshi built the cities of Shanxi and Guoting, now respectively the administrative centers for the Jieshi Province of Cascadia and the East Jieshi Prefecture of Tian Xia. This "First Wave" of Caucasian settlers led to the founding of modern Seattle, Vancouver, and Victoria. Oligarchic republics were the preferred method of governance, borrowing heavily from proto-Midgardian influences, with the region mostly divided into city-states. An ocean trade with the Rosarian city-states thrived during this period and Cuithepil particularly did well in drawing Caucasian settlers, which mingled with the local population to produce the modern Rosario ethnic group. Despite some attempts, the Caucasian population never fully penetrated the interior of the country, remaining along the western foothills of the Cascades for the next millennium while settling Victoria Island and off-shore islands northward toward Alaska (forging the first trade links with the peoples there). Portland was settled near the end of the "First Wave" period. The Second Wave began in the 1500s with the arrival of more immigrants, primarily of old Continent origin as well as those leaving the consolidation of the eastern and southern regions under Wilkonia and Shinra. This swell of population increased the manpower abilities of the local cities exponentionally but also led to a great deal of instability as newer mentalities of government clashed with the rigid social structures of the old oligarchs. To make matters worse for them, the newcomers were often even more friendly to the natives, marrying them and forming communities with them. Though many native tribes insisted on maintaining traditional ways the pressures for settlement by an energetic people making use of the land to build new towns and to exploit the natural resources of the region whittled down the numbers to a defiant few. Another element of the Second Wave was the spread of Christianity, brought to America from its birthplace to the east in the Old Continent. The religion's promises of equality before God further divided the paganistic oligarchs from the people they presumed to rule, increasing social tensions between the conservative factions and the newcomer-supportive ones. The tide of progress was not held back for long. By 1614 only Tacoma and small communities along the western foothills of the Cascades stubbornly persisted in maintaining the old city constitution. By 1700 they would be in the fold and the Confederacy of Cascadian Cities formed a decade later to provide common protection. To the south the arrival of Christianity undid the Rosarian political structure even more violently. The Rosarian elite attempted violence and coercion to hold back the tide of conversion and only succeeded in turning their people against them. In 1659 an enigmatic Canissian friar, Father Marcos, oversaw a successful revolt that overcame the ruler of Cuithepil. In the fighting fires were started and the city ended up burned to the ground. Undeterred, Father Marcos directed his converts to build a new city on the nearby plain and christened it "San Magdalena" before leaving to continue a reported cross-continental missionary journey (nothing was ever heard of the man again, and Church records of the period have not adequately pinpointed the origins and identity of Father Marcos). Further north, the undergoing settlement of the Cascades proper and their eastern foothills provoked conflict with the natives and, more disasterously, a battle with the organized Asiatic republic in Jieshi. Conflict over resources in the mountains and river navigation rights soon spilled over into a war with Jieshi from 1720 to 1726, when after much loss of life and the destruction of many towns the Confederacy and Jieshi agreed to delineate their borders. Eastward settlement from the Cascades was soon blocked by the larger Rockies, channeling settlement north into Columbia and south into Oregon and modern Grant, where rumors of immense lumber wealth, minerals in the southern Cascades, and gold in the northern Cascades fueled immigration to those regions and eventual Cascadian penetration into modern Yukon. The Mackenzie River was easily forded and Fort Sherman erected along the southern bank while small communities began to filter north as the century wore on, eventually extending Cascadian claim to the Yukon River, where Cascadia stopped due to the territory beyond being under a confederacy of statelets led by Inuvik. The lone exception was a stretch of rugged land just north of the mouth of the Yukon, where the Inuvik Confederacy had no settlements. A band of Cascadians set up fur-trapping posts in what they dubbed the O'Neill Territory which prompted Inuvik warriors to sweep into the area to drive them out, starting a short war that ended when Cascadia offered to permit Inuvik joint claim to the region and to allow the tribe a portion of the profit from the local trading post. The Confederacy's agreement, reached in 1745, proved somewhat unpopular among the small Yukon population, which believed it had the stronger claim to the O'Neill Territory. The local militia began construction of a fort on the northern bank of the Yukon that they named Fort O'Neill. During the 1720s to 1750s the settling of modern Yukon, Oregon, Grant, and northern Columbia proceeded apace. News was spreading from the east that powers in those directions, the Shinra Republic and Tian Xia, were moving westwards to occupy the continent, prompting a final push of colonization that moved east enough that it would settle the modern Cascadian eastern border in the extreme western foothills of the Rockies' western edge. The arrival of Shinra in the West prompted San Magdalena and the surrounding Rosarian countryside to look to the Cascadian Confederacy, who welcomed the Rosarians into the Confederacy as equal partners with only some discontent. This provided Cascadia with a solid southern frontier at the Nevada River, though there was consideration of staking claim further south that was shuffled aside due to interest in the Yukon and the islands off its shore. Foundation and Consolidation of the Republic The stresses of expansion, bickering between city governments, and the approaching great powers soon created the perfect storm of political discontent to give rise to a movement to reform the Confederacy into a Federal Republic. The spearhead was provided by Quincy-born lawyer John Adams, dubbed the "Atlas of Federalism", who made convincing arguments that led to the old Confederacy, in 1770, voluntarily dissolving itself and forming the Republic of Cascadia. The old city-based organizations were replaced by solid geographical lines, with the core of the Republic in the province of Olympia. The unicameral Confederal Council was replaced by the Congress, the lower house democratically elected and with seats proportioned by population (and thus advantageous to Olympia, Rosario, and Columbia) while Oregon, Grant, and Yukon were satisfied by the Senate being direct representation with only four Senators per province, elected by newly-formed provincial governments. In 1780, the newborn Republic, with John Adams in his final term as President, made formal diplomatic contact with the Shinra. Though the Shinra had strength and time on their side, there was little desire on their part to encroach upon Cascadia. After some deliberation the two nations signed the Treaty of San Magdalena in 1786 which has remained in force for two hundred years, drawing the nations' border along the Nevada River and then north to Shinra's northern border agreed upon with Tian Xia. Tian Xia provided a more difficult matter. The loose nature of government control there permitted local rulers to hold wide latitude in how they employed troops, even government troops assigned to them for the empire's westward expansion. In 1804 Guoting fell and East Jeishi was absorbed into the Empire. West Jieshi, which had begun to enjoy economic links with the Cascadians down-river, opted to throw in with the fledgling republic. An alliance treaty was signed that effectively turned the remaining part of Jieshi into a Cascadian satellite. The hostility of the border dukes of Tia Xia prompted the Republic to redouble efforts at military preperation. Already possessing a suitable industrial base, advisors spent the final decade of the 18th Century and the first decade of the 19th visiting other nations as far as PeZookia to examine the battlefields of the Old Continent and to examine modern military technology. These lessons were applied to improving Cascadian military technology... which would be needed very soon. The Yukon War The invigoration of the Cascadian Army came just in time. In 1807, just three years after East Jieshi fell, Inuvik fell to Tian Xia. Cascadian settlers, wary of losing newly discovered mineral sources in the disputed territory, moved further into the O'Neill Territory and established a chain of settlements to reinforce the Cascadian claim. Tian Xia refused to accept the Cascadian claim, citing that newly subjugated Inuvik had signed a treaty granting its lands to the Emperor, including the Territory. For the next several years there were infrequent clashes between Cascadian and Tian Xia settlers while diplomatic avenues were pursued. What happened next remains a strongly-debated point. Though the Emperor of Tian Xia had chosen to try diplomatic means to either win Cascadian withdrawal to the southern bank of the Yukon or concessions in other areas in exchange for the disputed land, the local border dukes remained hostile to anything but a military solution. In April 1815, with campaigning season set to begin, one of these dukes - an aggressive young commander named Xie Jia - took the initiative by launching an invasion of both the O'Neill Territory and Yukon Province. Reports conflict on whether Duke Xie was intending the eastern thrust to be a diversion or a plan to conquer the entire province, but the effect of the attack was quite clear. A force of 8,000 Tian Xia troops, soon augmented to 15,000 from extra troops and local levies, marched down the Mackenzie River. A brief siege of Fort Carter resulted but the older fortification, meant for fighting natives, was no match for the modern cannon of the Imperial Army. The Fort's walls were battered down and the defenders forced to surrender. The survivors were forced into hard labor, used to rebuild damaged walls to provide winter quartering should it be necessary for the army, while the civilian dependants were taken as hostages to secure their good behavior. Content with his success, Duke Xie marched onward to Fort Sherman. To the west, one of the Duke's subordinates, Count Ling, led a force of 2,000 men augmented by 4,000 conscripted Inuvik auxiliaries in an invasion of the O'Neill Territory. Every Cascadian settlement was torched as their occupants fled to Fort O'Neill. Ling countermanded Xie's orders to prevent the settlers from seeking refuge in the small fort, confident his cannon could deal with it. But Fort O'Neill, unlike Fort Carter, had been reinforced during the prior years. When the Tian Xia cannons fired upon the fort walls, they failed to do sufficient damage to allow a storming of the fort. Though the whole of the Territory had taken by Ling's troops, Fort O'Neill still flew the Cascadian Tricolor. Fort Sherman had likewise been fortified and the local militia mobilized. Militias from across the province poured in, those from the Mackenzie bringing word of Xie's troops burning settlements and posts along the river and encouraging natives to loot and attack Cascadians. A force of 2,000 militia gathered on the southern bank of the river and on 17 June 1815 engaged the vanguard of Xie's troops near a mountain creek, Settler's Creek. The Battle of Settler's Creek lasted six hours and saw the militia, after initial successes against the tightly packed Imperial troops, defeated and scattered by Imperial cannon. The victory against the militia reinforced Xie's opinion that Cascadia's army posed no threat and he continued his march. On 21 June he arrived at Fort Sherman and demanded its capitulation. Leland Hall, the Governor of Yukon, personally turned down the demand. An attempt by Xie to seize Fort Sherman by immediate storming failed and he turned to a siege, leaving 2,000 auxiliaries and 10 guns to bombard the fort while preparing his army to seize the mountain trails to the south that linked Fort Sherman with distant Monroe. Xie's maneuver was his undoing. Although the Columbia militia was marshalling to march north upon word of the invasion arriving in May 1815, the Cascadian Regular Army had chosen to be transported by river directly to the two forts. In July the two forces sailed from Seattle, making brief stops at Port Weir before heading on. A Brigade of 2,500 Cascadian regulars augmented by another 500 militiamen from the offshore islands was sailed up the Yukon River for Fort O'Neill while two brigades of regulars and another battalion of Olympian Militia came up the Mackenzie. The first Brigade, under General Anthony Tanner, disembarked and made camp ten miles downstream from Fort O'Neill. Count Ling received report from Inuvik scouts of their arrival but refused to believe the numbers and discounted the native scouts' account of the Cascadian position. The result was that on 15 August 1815, Tanner's Brigade was able to march right up to the Tian Xia camp. Ling had time to begin forming his troops up to fight and marched them forward in the manner he was accustomed to; that is, driving native levies before him with a wave of grim musket-bearing infantry in black with white accoutrement. But these were troops accustomed to fighting local semi-civilized armies that, at best, had primitive flintlocks. The modern muskets of the Cascadian Greencoats and their artillery were an enemy that these troops had not been used to. The Cascadian fire was terribly effective on the attacking Tian Xia troops and the artillery proved capable as well, if their gunners lacked the raw experience of their Tian Xia counterparts. Count Ling, seeing the Cascadian lines holding steady and his own forces being depleted, attempted flanking maneuvers with his remaining Inuvik levies. The native troops, however, were not up to being thrown into cannon and musket fire. After a couple faint-hearted charges they crumbled as well and refused to advance. Surprised at the effectiveness of his enemies, Ling panicked and called for the troops to regroup on more favorable ground to the north. Just as the Tian Xia lines began to fall back to commence the regrouping, Major Luis Vamos of the 1st Rosarian Infantry ordered his battalion to charge. The Rosarians surged forward and carried nearby battalions and then regiments with them. The Tian Xia force, already demoralized, crumbled under the bayonet charge and was utterly routed. Count Ling was found dead in his command tent, having ordered one of his aides to behead him out of shame. The survivors of the Tian Xia force that were not captured fled north and returned to Inuvik, from which news of the defeat spread to the rest of the Empire over the coming months. As they fled, Tanner's troops reclaimed the rest of the O'Neill territory and briefly occupied a village in Tian Xia territory before the decision was made to set up winter quarters outside of the settlement of Garnetville. Further south General Enrique Roya of San Magdalena was facing a less auspicious start. The Mackenzie River proved too shallow for the largest sailing transports to enter, forcing him to spend two weeks waiting for enough ships that could navigate the river so he could move his whole force. In the end he dispatched one brigade ahead after notification came from Governor Hall that Fort Sherman's overcrowding was beginning to eat away at the fort's supplies. A couple of ships made runs up-river to deliver supplies, but only one made it through the cannon watching the fort and it was in turn forced to return to the fort when damaged by cannon fire after trying to head downstream. Finally, in 25 August 1815, Roya's force set out to the interior. As the last ship began to sail down the river a transport vessel from Tanner's force returned to Port Weir with a load of wounded and the news of the victory at Fort O'Neill, which buoyed the spirits of the seven thousand Cascadian troops. As they sailed upriver, Duke Xie was busy along the mountain trail. Shortly after besieging Fort Sherman, his army began throwing impediments down to try and restrain the marching of what he presumed would be the main force coming up the road from Monroe. A force of Columbia Militia, 3,500 strong, arrived from the south on 18 July but fell back rather than fight the 6,000 prepared Imperial troops. Xie chose to pursue and ordered his army forward. After three days he stopped and set up a new base camp on favorable terrain, using hills that overlooked the main route through the mountains from which his force could easily repulse any major attack. While Xie waited with the bulk of his force for a main attack that never came, General Roya's troops were forced to disembark on the 29th of August twenty-six miles downstream of Fort Sherman due to the lower river depth at Mackensen Crossing. He assembled his brigades and dispatched a small ship downstream to inform Governor Hall he was just a couple days' march away. Spending a day getting his force in order for the march, Roya's army used the extra room created by the Mackenzie valley to make decent time. Xie's besieging force of 2,000 native auxiliaries and 10 guns, bolstered by the recent arrival of 1,000 Imperial troops, was surprised when on the 2nd of September their scouts reported the approach of a marching army in battle line. The local commander, Baron Kant, ordered his forces to prepare to fight and pulled them out of their siege lines. On the open farmland west of Ft. Sherman Kant's troops prepared defensive positions as the Cascadian Greencoats marched up. His troops opened up first and began to inflict losses upon the Cascadian force. One of the early casualties was General Roya, who was trying to rally a faltering battalion when a musket bullet struck him in the neck and threw him from his horse. The numbers alone were in Cascadia's favor, but it was Governor Hall who fully salvaged the situation. He ordered a sortie from the fort of the remaining healthy militiamen, who charged out 500 strong and opened up on the rear of the Imperial force. The risk of leaving his fort open to counterattack paid off. Caught suddenly between two fires, the native auxiliaries panicked and fell apart. The Imperial troops, led by Baron Kant, held their ground and continued to inflict casualties on the attacking Cascadians until sunset, when a handful of survivors retreated southward into the wilderness. Baron Kant was not among them, having fallen in rallying his men on the defense. He died instantly on the battlefield and would be joined in death the next day by General Roya, who's wound proved fatal. As a result of the battle, the siege of Fort Sherman was lifted. Opportunity now presented itself to march south and pin Duke Xie's troops in on the mountain road, or to leave a screening force at Sherman while a brigade marched north to retake Fort Carter. But Roya's replacement, General Davis Lawrence, quarreled with Governor Hall over strategy. The two brigades remained stationary. It was not until the 7th that Xie found out about what had happened. Not one to panic, he abandoned his defensive position and moved his army north. On the 13th he ran into the screening force of Cascadian regulars, the 5th Regulars Regiment, in strong defensive positions. While using pioneers to try and find a path around, Xie launched four direct attacks on the Regulars' position that were repulsed with heavy losses. His artillery proved ineffective against the strong defense of their position. In the end, he was saved by the fact that the 5th Regulars had run out of ammunition. After holding past sunset, the regiment slipped off in the dark of night, leaving Xie's army an open path back to Fort Sherman. There the approach of the Tian Xia Army prompted a temporary truce between the bickering Hall and Lawrence. Their forces were arranged to prevent Xie from getting past the Fort. Xie, upon seeing the size of the Cascadian Army and considering his losses, decided that there was no point in continuing the campaign in Central Yukon and that he should retire his army to Fort Carter and winter quarters. He did not, at this moment, realize that Count Ling's force had already been destroyed and that Cascadia had resumed control of the O'Neill Territory. On the 14th Xie's army moved along the flank of the Cascadian brigade of General Walters, assigned to watch the eastern road. Lawrence directed the other Brigade to move up in an attempt to trap the Imperial force but was unable to do more than catch a straggling regiment as Xie's forces cleverly slipped around the Walters brigade. Though they lost another four hundred men on top of the regiment that got caught and torn apart, the Cascadian Army failed to win the decisive battle it had hoped to force on Xie. As Xie marched upriver to return to Fort Carter, a further reinforcement brigade of 2,000 regulars sent from Port Weir arrived on the 21st of September commanded by General Michael Sheppard. Sheppard's seniority in the army and his orders to become Roya's second-in-command effectively gave him the seniority to overrule Lawrence and take command of the unified regulars force, now up to 6,500 when accounting for losses in the prior weeks' battles. Sheppard made one of the crucial decisions of the war at this point. So long as Xie held even Fort Carter, Tian Xia had a diplomatic advantage and a position with which to threaten the whole province. He had to be dislodged, but with late September already here it would not be long before winter set in; a winter siege would bring with it sickness and a sapping of energy that could destroy the army without Duke Xie firing a shot. Nevertheless, with Hall's reluctant acceptance, Sheppard ordered the army forward, augmenting it further with 2,000 of the Columbian militia that had marched north to bring his force up to 8,500 troops. Xie had not expected a pursuit and was settling his troops into their planned winter quarters. By all reports he was stunned when, on the early morning of the 2nd of November, scouts dispatched to watch the roads informed him of the arrival of a large body of enemy troops. Already the weather was turning dreadfully cold and a snowfall was beginning. The idea of the Cascadians attacking seemed ludicrous. Xie's men were ordered to get their weapons and form up, a process that took time as they had been scattered in their camps. As his army jumbled up, not even in full formation, skirmishers from the Columbia militia - hardy men hand-picked by their regimental commander for their skill in moving through the terrain - began sniping on the Tian Xia camp. A bullet narrowly missed Duke Xie and several of his officers, including four regimental commanders, were shot down before the snipers were forced to retreat. Only a few hours remained until dusk when the Cascadian battle lines came up and were met by the Duke's prepared army. The ranks of black/white Imperial soldiers versus the Greencoats - the Cascadian citizen-soldiers - was an image soon to be made legend, with this battle - despite it's not fully decisive result - being almost as immortalized as the smaller but more pivotal, in the end, Battle of Fort O'Neill. The Cascadians again were the ones who attacked to commence the Battle of Fort Carter. Sheppard, having been one of the military officers sent overseas to study PeZookian and Canissian artillery practices, had better placed and positioned his artillery to support the advance. The Tian Xia artillery was successfully suppressed enough for the Greencoats to fully engage their opponents. And then the snow picked up. To this day it is a matter of debate if the Cascadian troops would have won if not for the snowstorm. Some eyewitness accounts indicate that their attack had already ebbed and that that the veteran Tian Xia infantry were holding too-strongly, others report that it was the Tian Xia, not the Cascadians, that were buckling under attack. Either way, the snowstorm that came in turned the battle into a chaotic mess with both armies gradually pulling back to regroup. Darkness fell long before the snow let up, condemning many poor wounded men to death by exposure as they were buried alive underneath snow. During the night, Duke Xie reached the painful decision that he could not hope to survive the next day's battling. The Cascadians' march had rattled him, striking at the very core of his belief that their army was backward and not a match for Imperial arms. Though his men had been given little rest, Xie ordered his army break up camp and retreat. Though he ultimately refused plans to torch Fort Carter or put his prisoners and hostages to death, Xie did strip the homes of Fort Carter of all food and heavy clothing before his army marched back up the Mackenzie. On the 3rd of November, with the snow having completely ceased, the Cascadian Army prepared for another day of fighting to find their enemy had retreated. For all intents and purposes, the Yukon War had ended. At least the fighting did. The killing was not quite over. The Emperor had first gotten wind of Duke Xie's attack in early July, despite the Duke's best efforts to mask his offensive. But it was on the 29th of September that a courier delivered news from the governor of Inuvik that the Cascadian Army had virtually annihilated an army of 2,000 Imperial troops and 4,000 native auxiliaries. The defeat enraged the Emperor, who ordered a courier sent forward to order Duke Xie back to the capitol to receive the full measure of "Imperial displeasure" his costly adventure had made him due. Even following news about Xie's victories, and his successful retreat to Fort Carter, did not alleviate the Emperor's sour mood on the man. Duke Xie's attack had already taken many lives, and would fittingly so claim his own. Upon returning to the prefecture capital of Bear Lake on the 21st of November, the Emperor's order to come to the capitol was waiting for him, as was a newer one stripping him of Imperial command and awarding it to the governor of Inuvik. Knowing that his life was forfeit, Duke Xie had a favored aide behead him in his private quarters with explicit instructions for his head to be delivered to the Emperor as apologies for his failure. Duke Xie's rash action had far-reaching consequences for both states. While before the Emperor might have gotten firm concessions from Cascadia in exchange for relinquishing the Inuvik claim on the O'Neill Territory, his army's blatant attack and embarrassing defeat against the "untried" Cascadian Army made it unlikely that the Republic would any longer brook recognizing Imperial claims on the O'Neill Territory. Recognizing what Xie's failure meant, the Emperor offered peace talks and a permanent border treaty deliberation, which was hosted on Shinra territory. In February of 1818 the Tian Xia and Cascadia signed the Treaty of Lockhart in which the O'Neill Territory was delineated and the Cascadian-Tian Xia border guaranteed and recognized. Cascadia's price tag, aside from the human costs of the war and the damage to the Yukon Province, was to agree not to support any Jieshi recidivism and to agree to recognize the rest of the Emperor's claims on old Inuvik territory. The treaty, and the following induction of West Jieshi into the Republic as the Province of Jieshi, brought an end to the decade of border intrigues and permanently solidifed the frontiers of Cascadia to the present day. As a result of Duke Xie's actions and their consequences, the Imperial Court was able to force through changes in the command structure of their army that gradually ensured that command of armies even out on the frontier was not given to nobility but to men handpicked by the Emperor and his advisors, a key evolution in the military structure of the Tian Xia state. For Cascadia the war provided a source of common pride for the common denizens of the mountainous country. Cascadians of all ethnicities and cultures had stood together in battle line, dressed as "Republic Greencoats", and fought and died as brother-citizens. Paintings of all the war's battles were commissioned, the best treated almost as national treasures. On the matter of military affairs, on 15 August 1816, the first anniversary of the Battle of Fort O'Neill, the Congress approved the creation of the Republic Guards, an elite brigade of regiments with the best officers and men the Army had to offer, all veterans of the war. Luis Vamos, the hero of Fort O'Neill who led the bayonet charge that broke the Tian Xia, was granted command of the 1st Guards Regiment and a promotion to Colonel (he had briefly been a Lt. Colonel after an earlier promotion near the end of the war). The Republic Guard has since remained as the fine spearpoint of the Cascadian military. Cascadian-Tian Xia relations have, since the Yukon War, had periods of cooling and warming. Though economic involvement between the two nations has improved, there remains an undercurrent of discontent. Some Tian Xia leaders has since voiced laments not that Xie attacked Cascadia out of the blue, but that he failed to accomplish his objective. In Cascadia, there are many who believe the Emperor silently approved of Xie's bold attack and only condemned it when he found out that Xie's forces were being pushed back. Nearly two hundred years has allowed the wounds to heal, but it may take longer for the ghosts of Duke Xie and Enrique Roya to be lifted from the ties between Cascadia and Tian Xia. The First Son of the Republic The Cascadian negotiating team that traveled to Midgar in 1816 to negotiate the eventual Treaty of Lockhart was led by the Secretary of State for the Chiles Administration. John Quincy Adams was the son of the Atlas of Federalism and grew up in a household that was overflowing with the high Republican ideals of his parents. He accompanied his father in the 1780s, after Adams' Presidency, when the elder Adams toured the American and Old Continents and their capitals. In those cities John Quincy was at times schooled in the most prestigious schools of Midgar, Orena, and Neve Tikveh. At age 15 he was voluntarily detached from his father and sent with the Cascadian mission to Sankt-Andreevsk to serve as a diplomatic translator given his proficiency in French, which the Cascadian minister did not speak but which was widely in vogue among the Slavs. Upon returning home at age 18 John Quincy was enrolled in Hentley University where he graduated with high honors in the practice of law. He was serving as a junior partner in the law firm of a family friend when the Jefferson Administration tapped the young man to be Cascadia's minister to Neve Tikveh, starting John Quincy on a diplomatic career of fifteen years that would see him a minister to several Old Continent capitals, culminating with a short appointment as diplomatic minister in Midgar before being brought home by President Chiles in 1812 to serve as Secretary of State. After negotiating the Treaty Adams continued on as Secretary of State until 1822, when he ran for the Presidency. His opponent was Leland Hall, the famed Governor of Yukon, who ran as "the people's choice" by emphasizing his humble backgrounds and his war service against Adams' mostly unnoticed service to the Republic as a diplomat. Though Hall successfully won votes from the frontiersmen who adored him and the Jieshi voters who opposed the Lockhart Treaty's recognition of Tian Xia's annexation of the eastern portion of their homeland, Adams triumphed in the other provinces on the strength of his reputation and his father's name, as well as support for his government policies. As a President John Quincy was a scholarly head of state who used the patronage of his office and his influence to advance the causes of scientific study and learning in the Republic. He commissioned public work projects to improve the national infrastructure and served his administration in dedication to improving the lot of the Republic. But for all his accomplishments there was a growing discontent with Adams. The frontier folk and the Jieshi resented his peaceful overtures to Tian Xia as the memories of fighting them still burned hotly. Governor Hall spent the six years of Adams' presidency working to improve his support in the provinces that did not support him in the first election. His campaign proclaimed himself a "man of the people", the ally of the common Cascadian unlike the scholarly, intellectual Adams, an elitist old man who had squandered the victories over Tian Xia and who wasted government money on meaningless and stupid expenditures like his proposal for "lighthouses in the sky" (a mocking reference that some took literally referring to Adams' push for observatories to study the stars, which he referred to colorfully as "lighthouses of the sky"). In 1828 the new election was held. Though Olympia and Rosaria proved solidly supportive of Adams once more, Hall's campaign worked and he managed to win extra counties in Columbia, Oregon, and Grant as Hall appealed to the rural voters who disliked government spending and distrusted the scholarly, town-born Adams. In a close election, Hall unseated John Quincy Adams from the Cascadian Presidency and his supporters hailed it as the victory of common Cascadians over the urban elites of the Republic. However, in the long run, it was Adams, not Hall, that would be celebrated. Hall's brash frontier spirit served him well in the Yukon, but as the President of the Republic he came off as vain, overbearing, and obstinate. He did not work well with Congress at all, his attitude toward the Bank of the Republic was denounced as blatantly illegal, he tolerated a violation of native rights along the frontier regions such as the practice of seizing fertile lands from natives and forcing them to relocate to less-suitable lands, and diplomatically he strained relations with both Tian Xia and Shinra over Cascadian settlers in the border areas and turning a blind eye to Jieshi recidivism in blatant violation of the Treaty of Lockhart. He remained popular enough in the rural areas to barely win re-election in 1834, but the newly-formed Whig Party - the ancestors of the modern Federalist-Republicans - won enough seats that they and anti-Hall Democrats created an even more hostile Congress. Hall's last six years in the Presidency were tied up with brutal interbranch fighting as Hall tried to force his policies through by brute force of will despite the opposition of the two branches. To make matters worse, Hall refused to act against his supporters from the Yukon when Cascadian settlers that had moved over the border and settled Rogertown in Tian Xia territory drove an Imperial tax collector out of town. The supporters armed the Rogertown settlers and openly talked of bringing the town and its environs on the Mackenzie River into the province, to the extent that the Governor, Miles Clayton, mobilized the Militia and sent it to Fort Carter, as if to march to Rogertown. At the last minute it was Clayton, not Hall, who pulled Cascadia back from the brink of another war by ordering the militia to disperse after arranging a local agreement with the Imperial Governor of Bear Lake to stand down their forces. Hall threatened to respond anyway and made threats of sending the Regular Army to the region but Congress firmly stood against him, threatening to cut military funding if the expedition was sent. In the end the last four years of Hall's Presidency were spent with a continual threat of frontier war with the powerful Tian Xia which forced higher army spending and further drained the economy. When the Emperor authorized a ban on Cascadian goods in the frontier regions, the resulting loss of customers plunged Yukon and Jieshi into an economic spiral that in turn caused a bank crash in Seattle and spiraled into the Depression of 1837. By the end of his twelve year Presidency Hall's war hero reputation had been tarnished by his brawls with the government, his abuse of Presidential powers and flagrant defiance of court rulings on behalf of his frontier supporters against the natives they were disposessing, and his bellicose behavior toward Tian Xia with the resulting war scare and econmically-devastating boycott. Even his rural support withered away, save his diehard frontier supporters in the Yukon. Nevertheless the aggressive man refused to be daunted, continuing to insist that he represented the common Cascadian, and ran for a then-unprecedented third term as President. The country resoundingly rejected him in 1840, electing in his place the first Whig President, Kyle Taylor. By this time John Quincy had returned to politics in an different fashion. In 1830 he ran for the House seat of his local community in Quincy at their explicit request. It was even reported that when a friend had assured him that accepting the town's nomination for Congress was not degrading for him as a former President, Adams had proclaimed that it would not be degrading for an ex-president to "serve as a selectman of his town, if the people elected him." Winning overwhelmingly against a token opposition, John Quincy soon became a thorn in Hall's side in Congress. Knowledgable in parliamentary practice and in law, the old man proved himself a feisty parliamentarian and an unshakable opponent to the "Hall Democrats" that attempted to defend their hero in the House no matter what he pulled. Adams denounced eloquently the mistreatment of natives in the frontier provinces, Hall's refusal to obey court rulings, and his bellicose policies toward Tian Xia. A founding influence of the Whig Party, Adams would briefly serve as Speaker of the House in 1834 before relinquishing that position in time for the Rogertown war scare to bring a new avalanche of denunciations against Hall as "the violator of oathes, a calamitous mischief-maker who knows nothing of law but his own tyrannical will". At one point an enraged Hall talked about storming into Congress and shooting Adams for his constant opposition and insults, a threat that Adams supposedly cackled in amusement at. Early on Hall still retained some popularity outside of Yukon, in rural areas that still believed him, if anything, one of "them". Adams' popularity would grow stronger later in history as he handed the torch of the Whig Party and his personal ideals to his son, Charles Francis, and proteges in Congress like Julio Ortiz of San Magdalena and Michael Cunningham of Monroe. Unlike Hall, who lived another ten years after his loss of the Presidency, Adams would pass away in 1848, collapsing at his desk on the floor of the House and passing away two days later. When he died the bitter Hall proclaimed that "in twenty years nobody will know that this high-minded idiot ever existed", and one of his supporters anonymously remarked in the Fort Sherman Chronicle that "while an intelligent man with a long service of history to the Republic, John Quincy Adams was at heart an elitist who never took the side of humanity against privilege and the people have thankfully refused to honor him for that" (some sources believe this to have been an early writing of obscure poet Wilt Waltman), the author apparently not considering Adams' defense of the dispossessed natives and his years of arguing against the practice of forcing Asiatic immigrants into indentured servitude to be opposing privilege. Both Hall and the writer were proven wrong by history. After Hall died in September of 1850 due to catching pneumonia while celebrating the 35th anniversary of the lifting of the Siege of Fort Sherman, the Yukon Province built a statue to honor him, engraved with his defiant refusal of Duke Xie's order to surrender the city and fort. When a new Provincial Government complex was completed, the massive structure was named the Leland Hall Building. But outside of the Yukon Hall, while remembered as a war hero, was also remembered as a mostly bad President. John Quincy Adams, however, was held up as the standard for public men in the Republic. Senator Leonard Arthur made his name in part for his stirring eulogy of Adams in 1848, referring to the recently-passed man as "the First Son of the Republic". "Death found him at the post of duty. Where else would it have found him?" became the signature quote of the eulogy that would be engraved over Adams' tomb. Adams would soon become the bar by which Presidents and other leaders of the Republic were judged, and though the electorate would not always agree, men of intellectual capability (if not devoted scholars) and unflinching devotion to the public interest and duty to the Republic would be seen as the proper holders of public office in Cascadia. Forty years after Adams' passing a statue of him was placed in the South Lawn of the Presidential Mansion, facing the President's Office, with his quote to Julio Ortiz engraved in the direction of the Mansion: "The cause of all public men is to do their duty." The Industrial Age By the 1850s the world was beginning to change. Advancements in steam engines permitted the creation of the railroad among other advancements while the capability for refined manufacturing improved the quality and quantity of goods. Cascadia did not go untouched by this development, the first railroad being laid in the 1830s between Seattle and Adams District. In the 1850s several companies, supported by the Whig Party, began laying track across the Republic, though it would be 1870 before every provincial capital in the country was thoroughly connected to an interlinked national rail system. Along the south two rail lines were eventually built to connect Cascadia with the growing Shinra rail system to promote trade with the larger Republic; in 1876 the first rail line from Shanxi to Guoting connected Cascadia to the Tian Xia national railway as well. The flow of goods continued at a rapid pace, Cascadia's primary export being the plentiful stores of lumber made by improving logging operations throughout the Cascades region. Industrial factories began to pop up in Seattle, San Magdalena, and Vancouver, providing the Republic with a meaningful industrial capability. The plentiful waterways and ports permitted the founding of expansive shipyard complexes all along Puget Sound, centering in Bremerton, as well as a smaller facility in Victoria. The Republic also maintained a viable and capable armaments industry as part of the mentality of self-sufficient national defense started under the Madison Administration in the first decade of the 19th Century. Cascadia did lag behind somewhat in naval advancements, though by 1890 the first protected cruisers were starting to be produced to protect Cascadian trade with the islands in the Pacific, including trade with New Olympia on Velaria. The shift to industry did provide black spots. Early on the drive to increase industrial output was such that large factories were produced without consideration for their effect on the environment. But soon enough there was a strong push to prevent the spread of the industrial zones to limit their impact as well as limits upon logging, so quickly becoming vital to the Cascadian economy in those days. The Government brokered a compromise between conservationists and the logging industry in 1880 with the Evergreen Act which required logging companies to plant trees in fields they cleared. Labor disputes also begin to form as workers grew tired of poor working conditions and low pay. In 1881 the Socialist Party of Cascadia was formed by a circle of intellectuals who had attended the first International Socialist Conference the prior year in Portlandia. Though the Whigs were initially resistant to support labor over property-owners, they came around after the General Strike of 1885 following the Kalvin Textiles Fire in which two hundred women were burned alive and crushed by a collapsing building due to the owner disregarding fire risks and padlocking most of the exits to prevent workers from leaving without being seen. President Gerald Patterson, a Whig, toured the spot of the fire and paid strong attention to the investigation, resulting in his decision to change his party's line into being more supportive of Labor interests and signing into law the Workplace Safety and Accident Prevention Act of 1887. Though Patterson and a strong number of Whigs did move closer to a moderate position between business and labor, the Whig Party would for many years be considered pro-business more than pro-labor and the result would Labor looking to the Democrats (though radical Labor would be split between Socialists and non-Socialists who adhered to the Socialist and Labor parties respectively). Ultimately Labor and Business managed a private compromise with only slight government encouragement when, in 1894, businesses recognized the establishment of the first Union in Cascadia, the Industrial Workers of Cascadia, and offered to negotiate on worker benefits with them. By 1900 the Labor problems of Cascadia would, with some exceptions in extreme circumstances (such as the 1905 Bank Crash or the 1916 anti-war General Strike), be quiet compared to other nations in the world. Category:Backstory